Aug 01, 2006 :: Gurcharan Das on “the India Model”

Writing in the influential US magazine “Foreign Affairs” Gurcharan Das highlights features of India’s unique development model. Unlike China and Asian Tigers, India’s growth has not been export driven but based on domestic markets. Because of this Das argues, in the last 15 years, the economy has been less vulnerable to global vagaries, led to increase in consumption of Indians, created a middle class of 250 million and generally been people friendly. There has been less inequality of incomes as denoted by a Gini index of 33 vs. USA’s 41, China’s 45 and Brazil’s 59.

Das also points to other contrasts: entrepreneurial intiatives instead of government’s, services creation instead of manufacturing, rises in productivity instead of investment capital, high tech instead of low tech etc are the notable features of India’s emerging success. The long article is a review of the good and bad of the last decade and a half of India’s reform years. Read it here.